The Chair thanked her
Colleagues for voting her into the position of Chair and
mentioned:
- The Liberal Democrats
had appointed one of their own to the position of Scrutiny
Committee Chair because they believed that this arrangement had
worked for the past 2 years and so it should continue.
- The Scrutiny
Committee were there to service the needs of the widest Mid Devon
community. What would be important was to find consensus in
decision making.
- The core of the
Committee’s work should be to dig down into the roots of
issues that came before them – to ask the most searching of
questions that they could – in order to establish what the
truth was.
- There were some hefty
and important agenda items through the next 10 months – not
least of which was decentralisation and local government
reorganisation. Tasks that now resided with the County Council
would need to be appropriately shared between the Unitary
Authorities that were to be created – whilst still ensuring
that the existing District Council carried out their duties to the
best of their abilities.
- Parish and Town
Councils would have a huge part to play, in any new models, so the
Council needed to work even more closely with them, and to more
fully understand their key concerns and issues.
- Utility companies and
their failure to meet the demands of new developments, in servicing
what was needed, and in future proofing, would need the
Committee’s Scrutiny. Serious concerns over infrastructure,
needed to come well in advance of development, may well need the
attention of the Scrutiny Committee, plus roads, schools etc.
actually being built, rather than being on approved plans and then
not being delivered.
- How did the Council
move towards Net Zero by their target date of 2030 most
effectively?
- New Planning Laws
were now in place, with building challenges that were pretty
daunting, and very worrying for us in a rural county that also
needed farm land from which to feed our country’s
inhabitants. Developers were sitting on tracts of land that they
owned, not building on it. The District was challenged, in physical
geographical terms, by exactly where it was going to be possible to
build new homes in mid Devon. The District had so much beautiful
and important landscape that cried out to be cared for, not built
upon. By contrast it also had a huge demand for more social
housing, in particular, but the Committee must never lose sight of
what their residents most wanted, which was safe, economical to
run, homes of their own, where they felt safe and secure and part
of a community.
- Those residents from
the District who chose to come and join Scrutiny Committee
meetings, to prod at decisions the Committee were in the process of
making, were welcome. They, should be accepted as ‘critical
friends’ to the Council – taking the time, as they did,
to read documents, talk to fellow residents, and to have the
courage to come here and express their views. The Chair thanked
them for their commitment to working with the Council, not against
it, to find the correct solutions for residents.
- The Chair wanted the
Committee to move forward, not backwards, in their endeavours, and
asked that the Committee refrained from any attempt to dig up the
past, beyond having lessons to learn from mistakes made, and also
from successes achieved.
- Generally, the
Committee’s agenda would include an item on decisions from
Cabinet – it had been omitted, deliberately from this
meeting, since Cabinet had not met since the last Scrutiny
meeting.